Spencer Sherman PhD

Spencer Sherman, Ph.D. – Brief Biography

I hold a BS in Humanities and Science from MIT, and an MA and PhD in Psychology from Stanford University. I’ve been a licensed clinical psychologist since 1980, and have been teaching psychology at Santa Barbara City College since 1979, where I created the course in Positive Psychology twelve years ago, and continue to happily teach it.

I’ve also been teaching in the noncredit division of Santa Barbara City College (now called the School of Extended Learning, formerly known as Adult Education) since 1993. My long-running weekly class, Consciousness, Science, and the Nature of Well-Being, frequently enrolls a hundred or more students. I also teach Stress Reduction, Mindfulness, and Well-Being at Casa Dorinda, a retirement community in Montecito, California, filled with highly accomplished people. Three years ago, I was invited by Health and Wellness at the University of California at Santa Barbara to teach a weekly mindfulness class for both students and staff, and to help train faculty and staff in mindfulness.

In addition, for the past eight years I have been the moderator of the Mind and Supermind lecture series, through which Santa Barbara City College offers to the community at large the opportunity to hear distinguished figures in leading-edge and transformational psychology. I also continue to lecture at various community venues such as Antioch University and the Santa Barbara County Health Department. Drspencersherman.com is my website, on which there are free text, audio, and video files that provide guidance in mindfulness and psychological growth.

I was trained in mindfulness by Jack Kornfield in 1976, and have been teaching it to high school and college students, and mature adults, ever since. In 2006, I self-published a book called “I Know I Should Meditate, But...” What you can learn about health and happiness in ten mindful minutes a day, that can be purchased on Amazon.

Some years ago, I converted my clinical psychology practice into a life and executive coaching practice. This has given me the opportunity to work with some marvelously effective and talented people: CEOs, entrepreneurs, health care providers, teachers, and performers among them, and to primarily focus not on pathology, but instead on positive considerations such as growth, self-actualization, peak performance, meaning, fulfillment, and spiritual realization.